


The Cost of Living

by dairesfanficrefuge_archivist



Category: Highlander - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-31
Updated: 2001-12-31
Packaged: 2018-12-18 06:08:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11868285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist/pseuds/dairesfanficrefuge_archivist
Summary: by Palladia, Storie, and Wain





	The Cost of Living

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Daire, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Daire's Fanfic Refuge](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Daire%27s_Fanfic_Refuge). Deciding to give the stories a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Daire's Fanfic Refuge's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/dairesfanficrefuge/profile).

The Cost of Living

  


  


  


_The Cost of Living_

By Palladia, Storie, and Wain 

This originally appeared as a Round Robin story on   
the Highlander Holyground Forum 

* * *

Colonel Kevin Hobbs, USA, (Ret.) sat on Jacques Belloc's grave, leaning against the headstone, watching the sun set. It was happening at about the same rate that his mind was operating. 

He felt mazed and silly, glancing down from time to time at his hand. The rivulets of blood were dried now, running across his wrist and staining the cuff on the running suit he wore. Absently he rubbed his wrist, and the dried blood flaked off. 

Part of the reason why he couldn't think very well was the refrain cycling around in his head: Nobody can know. Nobody. If what MacLeod had told him was true, he'd still look like he was normal. MacLeod looked normal. He might be different, but he looked normal. 

"M'sieu?" The sexton at Ste. Anne du Bois had seen odd things, but never some stranger lounging on a grave. 

Nobody can know, Hobbs thought, and suddenly he had something in the way of a story. "We had an argument, my wife and I. She just drove off and left me." 

The sexton was a kindly man, well versed in the ways of wives, especially angry wives far from home. The man was obviously an American. 

"Perhaps I could take you to your accommodations. I must close up the church for the night." 

Hobbs climbed to his feet, followed the sexton into the little church. The low western sun streamed in through a small stained glass window above the choir loft. It depicted a woman with a baby, holding a leafing branch of a tree. Behind the altar was east, the sexton chattily told Hobbs, so the sun would illuminate the rose window for morning Mass. 

The colors cast on the mosaic aisle seemed brilliant to Hobbs in the silence of the church. Mixed with the scent of old leather on the kneeling benches was wood polish, long-burned incense and the few votive candles flickering in their red glasses. 

He ought to light a candle, he thought slowly, maybe it would help. But he had no money for the penitents' jar, and maybe it wasn't appropriate for a Protestant to do, anyhow. 

The sexton finished his rounds, gestured Hobbs out the door, locked it, and they went to the car. 

"I'll be glad to pay for your time and the fuel," Hobbs began, "If just you can get me back to Paris." 

"But of course! I must tell my wife I will be driving to Paris. Come, we will stop at the house." 

At the sexton's house, the meal was on the table and, of course, Hobbs must eat. Normal, Hobbs worried. I have to look normal. _Nobody can know._ He made small talk, terrified of undue attention. It was almost as bad as at the Point, when on no account must an underclassman come to the attention of those whose main purpose was to make his life miserable. He kept telling himself, _These people aren't trying to harm me: they're taking care of me. But, if they knew what I am, would they?_

By the time he was delivered back to the Centre, had gotten money to pay the sexton, and changed his clothes, he was beginning to think he just might be able to get away with it. Nobody at the Centre had thought anything amiss; he had just shown up in jogging clothes, showered, changed, and gone to his car. Now, if only he could fool his wife. He wasn't particularly late coming home, so she might take no notice. 

He was beginning to think ahead, just a little. MacLeod had said he should find a teacher. He hadn't said how to do that, and Hobbs had no idea what a teacher might be expected to teach him. 

After all, losing one's head wasn't a very likely thing. He could probably go years and never think about it. Louise was in the kitchen when he got back to the apartment, and he kissed her on the cheek, thinking: all normal routine. He said that he'd eaten, and asked if Mark had come home yet. 

"No. He's still at the gym. There's a match coming up," Louise Hobbs, his wife of twelve years, replied. 

My wife, Hobbs thought. Mine. Wainwright's dead, been dead all these years. I hated him at the Point; I hated him in Nam. When he died in the crash, I was very sympathetic with Louise, but I'm not any too good with his son, the great athlete. The champion fencer. The smart kid who will doubtless die before me, now, he thought, as the comforting idea bloomed. 

He was relaxing in the living room reading the _Paris Match_ when the funny buzzing headache started. His returning stepson, the fencing champion, stopped dead at the door, staring at Hobbs. 

The irony stung him from a vague distance that made him need, subconsciously, to laugh. So his bluff was called, before he was ready, and by the last person to whom he owed explanation, allegiance or respect. He forgot about acting normal; nevertheless, the normal reaction arrived on cue, that being the appearance of Wainwright's son. 

He had spat the word at the boy often enough through the years, using the surname as a profanity and a disgrace. Hostility at the life his nemesis had left behind, a permanent reminder to Louise that she had, for a time, been happily married, eroded Hobbs' own productive abilities throughout the years, leaving him impotent in more ways than he cared to address. Every humiliating chip that fell from his own character made him want to hammer bigger chunks away from the spirit of his stepson, who bore the blame for Hobbs' misery with stoic silence as he grew from boy to man. 

Now, staring at the figure by the door, Hobbs was reminded of how sculptors created masterpieces from blocks of marble. 

§ § § 

Mark Wainwright made note of the milestones in his life in terms of changes in fortune. Looking at his stepfather, who was lounging on the couch with a not entirely successful air of carelessness about him, Mark could feel that his life was about to change again. 

Mark regretted deeply that he had allowed his first twelve years to pass unremarked. He knew now that a normal, happy childhood in a normal, happy family was, by the very nature of its normalcy, simply and plainly unremarkable. Still, after his father died, he had often wished that he could bring forth more normal and unremarkable childhood memories to replay in his imagination. 

The car accident that took his father's life was like a boulder diverting the flow of a river, and Mark and his mother's lives eddied and swirled and rushed off in a new direction. Before Mark had even begun to adapt to the impossible role he had assigned himself as man of the house, his mother married Kevin Hobbs. 

Military service molds all of the men and women it touches, but Mark had long since noticed that of all of his father's friends and acquaintances from the war, Hobbs was the most extreme. His carriage, his haircut, his suits, his speech all cried what Mark's father had used to mockingly call military-itis. 

Hobbs ran his new family like another branch of the service, and Mark seemed to be nothing more than a recruit whose spirit was to be broken. Excellence in school and athletics did nothing to change Hobbs' constant disappointment in and disdain for him. As Mark passed into adolescence, the tension between stepfather and stepson grew greater and greater. Mark hated and feared Hobbs, his rigidity, and his harsh disciplines. Mark's mother passed from ineffectual attempts to reconcile the two to cowed silence. It was a relief for all three when Hobbs suggested that Mark be sent to boarding school in France. 

Standing at the threshold of his twenty-fifth year, Mark considered the boarding school a stroke of good luck, although his teenaged self wouldn't have agreed. There was loneliness at first, but it was at school that Mark discovered that he had a knack for history and math and for pleasing his teachers. It was there that he discovered fencing. His first angry thrusts were aimed at his absent stepfather, but a generous teacher saw the innate skill hidden in Mark's uncontrolled movements and convinced him to join the fencing team, where his gift blossomed. 

Mark saw things more clearly when he held a saber in his hand. Time slowed into a rhythmic, gentle stream during practice. This was when Mark realized that his mother stayed with Hobbs because she was more afraid of being alone than she was even of him. This was when Mark made his plans for the future—banking was for him; history teachers were as poor as churchmice, and he wanted very much to give his mother the financial opportunity to get out Hobbs out of her life one day. 

When categorizing his life in terms of fortune and reversals of fortune, Mark never knew if the job at the bank was good or bad. He loved the world of finance, loved where he worked—a clean-edged, modern, glass-enclosed space in a refitted nineteenth century building in the fourteenth arrondissement in Paris. Mark started out as a low-level account manager in a hierarchy that would have made Hobbs feel right at home. Starting out in such a mundane position was the unfortunate part of working at the bank; being in the right place at the right time was the fortunate part. Mark was promoted, not for his clever ideas, but for stumbling into and foiling a robbery attempt. His superiors took one look at Mark's bloodstained suit jacket and gave him a new position and a higher salary as a reward for his loyalty to the bank. 

Mark considered the promotion and raise to be good fortune; he could afford an apartment in Paris for his mother. The fact that Hobbs came with his mother Mark chalked up to bad fortune. Mark was still holding one more outcome of the attempted robbery under advisement, unsure if it was good or bad—that day he died and then picked himself up from the bloodied marble floor of the bank, reborn into Immortality. 

Now returned from fencing practice at the gym and leaning against in the doorway of his mother's apartment—he refused to think of it as Hobbs' apartment and had made sure that only her name was on the deed—Mark smiled and thought about what he would tell his on-again, off-again teacher, Amanda, about this turn of events. Lady Fortune had smiled on Mark and turned her wheel again; Hobbs was right where Mark had always wanted him to be, right where Mark had been at the age of twelve, alone and unprepared for what life had just given him. Mark permitted a slight smile as he met Hobbs' eyes, aware that his own equanimity increased the other's agitation; it always had. 

He had known, of course, since his own training began, that his stepfather was one of the Chosen. The pre-Immortal warning had disturbed him from the start for the knowledge that if Hobbs were to violently die, Mark would find himself in one of two very awkward positions: he would either take the head of his mother's husband or become his stepfather's teacher. Both choices made him shudder, if for conflicting reasons. Mark wondered what had happened, how and when and by whose hand, to bring Hobbs across the threshold. He wondered how much the old man knew about this game Immortals played—to live, to win. 

Not much, his smile broadened, judging by the hostile defiance, the ill-concealed terror in Hobbs' eyes. 

The dread had become reality, both a milestone and a reversal. How would the old man react to experiencing a twelve-year-old boy's feelings of helpless subservience? They would both find out. Mark would wait for Hobbs to make the first move, to speak the first line. 

"Hi, honey!" Louise smiled at Mark as she entered the room. "I baked cookies." Her eyes fled downcast past her husband as she turned back toward the kitchen. 

Hobbs stood and stared uncertainly at Mark. 

Mark swallowed a chuckle and turned his back, following his mother to the table. Let the game begin. 

§ § § 

Arriving sequentially on Duncan's monitor, the drawings weren't quite animation, but they progressed to tell a story, nonetheless. A man walking on the riverside, approaching the barge. Circles of light under the street lamps—at night, then. Himself—Duncan marveled at the economy of lines that outlined his form—coming to the top of the gangplank, forestalling the visitor's entry. The unspoken, unsigned warning: Hobbs is coming. Don't let him into your home. 

§ § § 

It had been no great trick for Hobbs to find out where MacLeod lived when he was in Paris—a quiet call from the bedroom phone to the Intelligence room at the Centre had provided him with the site. Jake Chisholm, deep in the ongoing Hearts game the spookshop ran at night, heard the call, then drew the inference as well as the sketches to send to Duncan. 

§ § § 

Mark Wainwright saw his stepfather disappear briefly, then prepare to go out, and the possibilities seemed endless. Hobbs was too new to the Game, there was too much he couldn't know. Still, the prospect of simply standing aside to let someone else take care of the problem was enticing. 

In the end, though, amused by his own behavior, he slipped out of the apartment, armed and ready to protect a man he despised. 

Mark had been on this quay before, with Amanda. She had taken him to meet Duncan, then melted away to go shopping after a merry luncheon. They had fought a bitter game of chess through a long afternoon until Duncan finally cornered Mark's king. Mark had been surprised at the extent of the older Immortal's grasp of the finance game, too, until Amanda told him just how much time Duncan had spent playing it. 

If his mother had remarried, why not someone like Duncan, Mark wondered. Someone he could have loved as a father: a beacon, not a poseur. 

From the dark of an overpass, Mark watched the scene unfold: Hobbs approaching the barge, Duncan walking down to meet him, turning him aside to walk on down the quay. He was just a little too far away to hear the conversation. 

§ § § 

"MacLeod, look, you did this to me. I didn't ask for it. You made me like this, you have to help me." 

"Does an obstetrician make the baby, or does he just bring it forth? You're not my fault. You know what you are, now, that's all." 

"You said I had to have a teacher. Fine. I want you." 

Hobbs wasn't used to having men laugh at him to his face. He suspected they did it behind his back, but not like this. He didn't like it. As soon as he could do something about it, MacLeod would pay for this. Right now, though, he needed something he couldn't compel. He needed MacLeod's willing cooperation. 

Hobbs was surprised at the gentleness of the refusal, when it came. "You need a different teacher. We're not very compatible, and met under bad circumstances. If you keep a low profile for a while, you'll have the time you need to learn." 

"I don't have any time at all! My stepson is one of you!" 

"Us, Hobbs. One of us. We're all in this together. Who's your stepson?" 

"Mark Wainwright." 

"Mark? Mark's a nice kid. Plays a wicked game of chess. Get him to teach you: he'd be good. I think he's ranked as a fencer, too. You could do a lot worse than Mark for a teacher." 

"I don't see how. He hates me, and I . . ." 

"And you are seeing your pigeons come home to roost. As I said before, live with it. Look, Hobbs, I've known a lot of Immortals, and none of us had an easy time of it the first few years. It's a hard adjustment. Do whatever it takes to make peace with Mark, and get on with it." 

§ § § 

It proved difficult for Mark to concentrate on work the next day at the bank. He fidgeted uncharacteristically throughout the morning, then made a sudden decision to call Amanda and arrange to meet with her and ask her advice. He found himself spending the afternoon having conversations with himself, trying to make sense of this turn of events in his life. 

He left the bank early and headed for the rendezvous spot that Amanda had suggested. He found her in the back of the crowded and smoky bar, smiling and lifting a glass in welcome. Mark ordered an Armagnac, drank it in a single swallow, and placed his glass on the table hard enough to draw the attention of patrons several feet away. Amanda traced the rim of her glass of vermouth and tapped on one of the ice cubes, watching it submerge and bob to the surface again. 

"So where is Hobbs now?" Amanda asked with studied nonchalance. 

Mark grunted and chuckled.. "At the church near mom's apartment. He's spent more time in church since becoming Immortal than he did the whole rest of his life." 

"And he hasn't asked you to be his teacher yet?" she queried. 

"He'd rather die than owe me," Mark said, dredging up an often-repeated phrase that had suddenly taken on new meaning. 

Amanda leaned forward and placed her elbows on the table and her hands under her chin. She was beautiful as usual. That was the first thing Mark had noticed about her, long before he knew about Immortality, when Amanda was nothing more than a very attractive client with money in lots of foreign accounts and he was nothing more than her account manager. He wondered why she was turning her charms on him now; she had always told him that it was unwise if not downright dangerous for an Immortal student and teacher to get involved sexually. A slow blink and a frank and open stare from Amanda brought Mark's attention back to the subject at hand. 

"You can't toy with him," she stated. "Either be his teacher or cut him loose." 

"MacLeod told Hobbs that he wouldn't be his teacher," Mark informed her. 

A sad look crossed her face; her eyes were distant. "He won't be ready for another student for a long time." She shook herself to attention and returned to the subject at hand. "The question is: What are you going to do, Mark? Start your stepfather off with some fencing and the basic rules of the Game if you want or just let him go, but don't use this as a chance to take revenge." 

Mark was worrying his lower lip with his teeth. "If I had wanted a lesson in morality, I would have asked MacLeod to come." 

Amanda patted Mark's hand, which was rapidly turning the shot glass over and over on the table. He stopped and stared at her, wondering if there was a statute of limitations on the rule about not getting involved with your teacher. When Amanda spoke, her voice was devoid of its usual playfulness. "I'm not talking morality. I'm talking self-preservation. You're a straight arrow, Mark. Do you remember when I was your client at the bank?" 

Mark nodded his head. He remembered how dazzling she was and how she flirted with him and with all of the other bank employees. He also remembered being absolutely sure that she was moving money from one foreign account to another in a way that wasn't kosher, but he was equally certain that it wasn't going to be easy to catch her at her game. 

Amanda continued, "You would have turned me in if you could have figured it out, wouldn't you?" 

Mark's head jerked up. A guilty look was on his face. 

"That's what I mean," she said. "You were completely, totally, unimaginably trustworthy around millions and millions of francs of other people's money. You're almost as much of a goody two-shoes as Duncan is." She silenced Mark's protest before he could get a word in edgewise. "And if you had invited Duncan here today, he would have told you the same thing I'm telling you. Take revenge on Hobbs if you want, but be prepared to live with it for a very, very long time." 

§ § § 

The gloom deepened within the sanctuary and within Hobbs. He knew nothing of religious practices, having held himself proudly above the need for a spiritual crutch, and was thus unacquainted with any deity who might be cajoled or suborned into digressing from greater duties to help him now. 

He was sick with fear and anger. He was furious at MacLeod for bringing about his Immortality and abandoning him to his own devices, and he was livid at his wife's son. Hobbs expected Mark to approach with proper respect and humbly offer his services as a teacher — allowing Hobbs the usual tirade over the boy's pathetic wastes of time and useless hobbies before deigning to allow Mark the privilege of instructing a superior such as Hobbs. Mark would also do well to express appropriate gratitude for the opportunity to train a man of his stepfather's caliber. 

Hobbs studied the wooden cross in the corner and blinked with the impact of two realities: Mark wasn't a little boy anymore, hadn't been for a long time; when had that happened? And Hobbs had never been the hero that Mark had worshipped, and attempting to force respectful fear and awe into the boy for his great and mighty self had resulted in an extremely opposite effect. 

If he wanted Mark to train him, Hobbs was going to have to ask him, and Hobbs would bear the burden of presenting humility and respect in the question. He snarled involuntarily at the thought, even as his mind progressed beyond that hurdle. 

There Can Be Only One. MacLeod had quoted this rule of the Game, insisting that Hobbs ask Mark what it meant. If it was a literal statement, supposing only one Immortal could ultimately survive, Hobbs wanted to be that One. He would never believe Wainwright's son would have the ability or the nerve to defeat him. Mark, however, was already on Hobbs' hit list. He wanted MacLeod vulnerable, too, to see the disdain in those dark eyes replaced by fear as Hobbs took his head. Adam Pierson was also responsible, the mortal of whom Jake Chisholm was to have disposed after fruitless interrogation and instead released. 

He stood, still speculating, and wandered toward the exit of the church. This Adam might just be the place to start. He had answers that Chisholm had not accessed. Or perhaps Chisholm knew, after all, more than he had shared with Hobbs. Hobbs' eyes glittered menacingly. Chisholm wasn't Immortal, either. He would be any easy mark. All this was ultimately his fault, after all. If anyone owed the piper, it was Jake Chisholm. Hobbs would gladly collect the dues. 

Hobbs would ask Mark to train him. And Hobbs would remember every remark, every smirk, every look that came from Wainwright's eyes, and his stepson would soon enough pay for them all, one at a time. 

He emerged from the church into the twilight, stepped onto the sidewalk, and cringed at the now-familiar buzz between his ears. Looking frantically around, he saw only a woman, tall and slender, propped against the low stone wall that bordered Holy Ground. She had short platinum hair and large dark eyes and she looked at him and smiled. 

"Colonel Kevin Hobbs," she sauntered to him and offered a hand. "It is such a pleasure to meet you." 

§ § § 

"I respect that," Mark acknowledged. He sprawled comfortably on the sofa, watching Duncan lap the furniture in the barge like a caged animal. His neck was tired with the effort of keeping up. "The two of you most definitely would not get along, but that's just the problem—no one is going to get along with Hobbs. He's a user. Instead of friends, he has colleagues—military buddies who serve this purpose or that. He's never the student, always the master. Whoever ends up with the job is likely to lose their patience and then their head to him. One thing he does know," Mark sighed, "is how to recognize and take advantage when it plays to him. He doesn't believe in giving second chances." 

"So are you going to teach him?" 

"Perhaps, if he asks me . . . nicely." 

"And if he doesn't? Your mother is a widow once. Are you going to risk her going through that again?" 

Mark craned over the back of the couch. "She's ten years younger than Hobbs. He would probably have died first anyway, as a mortal." 

Duncan raised an eyebrow. 

"She's miserable with him, helpless without him. She's always had a man to take care of her, do things for her. But she has me. If she lost Hobbs, she'd still have me." 

"What I'd like to know," Mark turned back around and massaged the base of his skull, "is who is responsible for Hobbs' Immortality. Gaaah, if I could get my hands on that person, I would make him—or her—pay for putting my family in this position." 

The silence took on a life of its own as Mark waited for a reply. When none was forthcoming he turned, his whole body this time, and looked over the back of the sofa at Duncan, who stood perfectly still, studying the floor through the bottom of his shot glass. He raised his eyes without moving his head, an oblique glance that wounded Mark as surely as a blade. 

"MacLeod?" Mark was incredulous, angry, barely believing. "But why? How-" 

"There was someone in the Centre I had to get out, intact. He's gone now, and Hobbs will never get his hands on him again. He's good at disappearing," Duncan began. 

"I promised Hobbs the secret of Immortality to get him out of the Centre, where he could control things. Then, the more we looked at the situation, it seemed that the best way to neutralize him was to make him irrevocably part of the group he abhorred. 

"He just didn't know what he was. He wanted a way to identify Immortals, and now he's got one. Of course, he planned not to be vulnerable, himself. He wanted to be a sniper, deadly but safe. 

"Now, he's got his license to kill Immortals. Unfortunately, it's open season on him, too. He'll get used to it. Or not." 

Duncan's honest indifference to Hobbs' problem struck Mark as funny. He laughed until he was half choking, with Duncan pounding his back and offering ice water. 

Later, distracted, walking up the river, Mark was still chuckling when a heavy arm was thrown over his shoulders, and a voice above his ear said, "Hobbs send you over to spy on MacLeod?" 

Jake held Mark lightly, but was prepared to drop him to the stone paving if need be. He knew who Mark was, but Mark almost surely didn't know him. 

"Let me guess," Mark said, walking along, "Mac hired someone to keep an eye on the barge. Or are you his Watcher?" 

"I'm sort of keeping an eye on him. Unofficially." Jake grinned at the younger man. 

"Unofficially . . . for whom?" 

"Mark, how about I buy you a drink?" 

"How do you know my name?" 

"Knew your old man," Jake replied. 

"I'm having a bad enough time with him. I'm not going to drink with his goons," Mark snapped. 

"Actually, I meant Lew. Your father. He was a good man." 

Three hours and a great deal of red wine later, Mark had learned new facets of Lewis Wainwright, beyond the medals, things his own memory and his mother could never have supplied. He was a little drunk, but soberly thoughtful. 

Whatever Kevin Hobbs had said or done to him, there was one thing he could never change: Mark was someone else's son, and it seemed that someone else was a genuine hero. He had read it in Jake's eyes, heard in his voice the satisfaction he took in handing Mark his heritage. 

It was late when Mark got back to the apartment. He was going to find another place to live, so he could get a good night's sleep for a change. Judging from Hobbs' overall look lately, he hadn't been doing very well, either. When Mark let himself in, Hobbs was sitting in the living room, in the dark, waiting. 

"Good evening, Colonel," Mark said, his voice calm, polite. 

"Mark, I'm going to need a teacher." 

"Yes, you are." 

Hobbs swallowed hard, paused, and said, "Will you do it?" 

Not even a "please," Mark thought. In the voice he used to explain to clients about their investment options, he said, "If this is what you want, I will. But it's 'firewall' separation. You come to me as a student, and I will be there as a teacher. Bring no history, and it could work. The training will be separate. Do you agree?" 

There was a long silence, as Mark stood with his back to the door. 

"I agree. Thank you." 

In the darkness, unseen by Hobbs, Mark nodded once. A good student was polite. "You're welcome," he replied, with courtesy if not conviction. 

§ § § 

The fencing club was a beautifully appointed facility in an elegant 19th century building. No sign announced its presence; its members knew where it was, and it was not open to the public. It opened every day except Sunday at 5:30 a.m., but members only rarely came that early for a workout. The few businessmen who could afford to keep up the training from their glory days of fencing club in university usually rolled in an hour or two later. The practice floor would be empty enough for Mark to have a little privacy with his student—his mouth twitched in amusement and discomfort at the thought—but the presence of the morning desk manager and janitorial staff should keep him safe should Hobbs prove less than trustworthy. 

Mark had listed the rules of the Game and the parameters of Immortality on the thirty minute drive to the club, wishing that he could take his eyes from the road to really watch the emotions that he glimpsed marching across Hobbs' face: incredulity, fear, stubborn resistance, and finally, dejected acceptance. At the club, he noticed that Hobbs was observant and a quick learner, wading without complaint into the required practice gear. Mark needed to make only one adjustment, that of pulling the cuff of the glove over the outside of the jacket sleeve where Hobbs had tucked it in. 

On the _piste,_ Mark handed Hobbs a practice saber and took one for himself. Hobbs looked toward Mark's bag, which very nearly concealed the shape of the sword within, and asked, "We aren't going to use real ones?" 

"These are fine for now. When you've progressed enough, we'll talk about weapons with a real edge," Mark responded. His smile barely evident through the mesh screening the front of his mask, he started the lesson with the basics. Hobbs' curt but polite nods were enough feedback for Mark; as long as he couldn't hear Hobbs' voice, he could pretend that someone else was behind his student's mask. 

Mark traced a vertical line down the center of the metal plastron covering Hobbs' chest. Hobbs startled a bit but didn't back away. "Imagine eight zones across your chest and abdomen," he said as he traced horizontal lines at the level of Hobbs' heart, lower ribs, and just below the navel. "These are targets . . . strike zones, if you wish," trying military parlance to make his point clearer. He tapped each one in turn as he continued, " _prime, seconde, tierce, quarte, quinte, sixte, septime,_ and _octave._ Each one has a corresponding parrying move to protect it." 

"Eight parries?" Hobbs' voice was tentative. 

"Well, nine actually," Mark let a smile touch his face, "but I think you won't have too much trouble with the ninth." 

"In competitive fencing, sabreurs score points for all hits from the waist up, including the arms, hands, and head. In the Game, anything goes, and there's no second place. Shall we begin?" Mark asked. 

He led Hobbs through some basic cuts, thrusts, and parries, surprised to find that he was able, for longer and longer stretches of time, to bypass his feelings and see the man as a student. He was surprised, too, at Hobbs' stamina and ability to follow orders; he supposed it was all of the years in the military. 

"Keep your left hand back," Mark reminded Hobbs for perhaps the twentieth time, watching the ungloved hand pull inward over his chest as if to protect his heart. 

Lunges were next. "Don't pronate your back foot," he told Hobbs, demonstrating how he had rolled his back foot inward when he lunged forward. "It puts added strain on your front knee and leaves you unstable," Mark explained. 

Another series of lunges ended with a sharp cry of pain from Hobbs. "It's your bad knee," Mark told him. "You pronated your left foot again." Hobbs took slow and tentative steps in a small circle, favoring the right knee. 

"I thought that everything was supposed to heal when I became . . . " Hobbs couldn't even say the word. Mark hoped the mask hid his smirk. He waited a few minutes until Hobbs' walk become steadier, the right knee bearing weight fully again. 

"Anything that happens to you from now on will heal," Mark told him. "Your bum knee will always be a bum knee, and since it's your right knee and you're a right hander, you'll always be at a disadvantage. Of course, if you live long enough, you could become a leftie." He tried to keep his voice neutral, tried to keep smugness out of it; a good teacher encouraged his students. 

They had a few minutes left before the regular morning crowd would enter the floor. Mark stood opposite his student and saluted him, signaling the beginning of a short round of sparring. He corrected and gave Hobbs reminders as he went, barely winded while Hobbs was grunting with exertion. There it was, Hobbs' left hand had drooped across his chest again. Mark pulled back and, from his elbow, gave a hard whip with his saber across Hobbs' knuckles, breaking the skin and drawing blood. 

"Maybe your hand will remember better than your head will. Keep your left hand back," Mark told him. 

Mark saluted again to begin another round. He allowed Hobbs to advance on him a little, then stepped up his speed and strength to drive Hobbs backward. Mark thrust hard toward Hobbs' face; Hobbs turned and ran six or seven steps before he realized that Mark wasn't following. 

"Ah, I see you've figured out the ninth parry all by yourself," Mark said, his voice mild but his smile broad under his mask. 

Hobbs pulled his own mask over his head, walked away from the practice floor without a final salute of his saber, and sat hard on the bench near his and Mark's bags. He could make out the shape of Mark's sword in his bag; what no one could see was the revolver that Hobbs had stowed inside his own bag. 

§ § § 

Duncan was contemplating dinner for one when the door swept open and light footsteps announced a visitor aboard the barge. 

"Hi, Darling," Amanda kissed him lightly on the cheek and eyed the repast on the counter. "Raw veggies," she informed him, "and crackers do not a meal make." She shoved a grocery bag into his arms. "Here, add this to the menu. You do own a wok?" 

"Where are you going?" Duncan demanded of her back. 

"To take a shower . . . " the rest of her words faded in the direction of his bedroom. 

Amanda returned to find the table set, Duncan and the meal waiting on her. She hesitantly sampled the egg drop soup; it was not her favorite, but then her dinner request and the ingredients she supplied had been open to interpretation. Duncan watched for a moment, and waited, and finally asked. 

"So what are you doing here? Hiding from someone until you can return for your stash?" 

She rolled her eyes at him and pressed a napkin primly to her lips. "I came for dinner and Duncan," she asserted with brash confidence that, on Amanda, was not unattractive. 

"And?" He exchanged the soup bowls for plates. She clicked her chopsticks at him as he resumed his seat. 

"And," she sighed. "Okay. You know Mark Wainwright." 

"Saw him very recently," Duncan smiled. "He's a good man, a good friend." 

"Have you met his stepfather?" 

"Colonel Hobbs? Yeah," Duncan dropped his gaze, "we've met." 

"What did you think of him?" 

"What does it matter?" 

Amanda shrugged. "It's just that, well, he's _new._ He's all vanity and bluff and could lose his head in a hurry if he doesn't take the time to learn how to survive. You can't con a bladed weapon." 

"You should know." Duncan capitulated at Amanda's unfortunate look. "So Mark introduced you to his stepfather? I'm surprised that he would do that. When did this happen?" 

At Amanda's sheepish withdrawal every hair on the back of Duncan's neck stood at attention. He drew in a weary sigh and pushed back his plate. "All right. Start talking." 

"Mark told me that Colonel Hobbs had become Immortal. I like to meet the competition." 

"Competition." 

"Yes. 'Only one.' We're all out to kill each other, remember? I just like to keep up with who's who in the neighborhood, that's all." 

"And?" 

Amanda gave up on her meal. "And, Mark was concerned about having to be Hobbs' trainer. They aren't exactly bosom buddies. So, I sort of ran into Hobbs and had a chat with him. Small talk, you understand. And when he confessed that he was new to the Game and needed help, I directed the conversation in such a way that he would admit his stepson was Immortal and I could then suggest that he ask Mark for help. I was pretty sure I had convinced him to do that, and they both have called since then to confirm that I had." She smiled brightly. 

"They _both_ called you?" 

"Yes, well, Hobbs doesn't know about Mark and me. Mark doesn't know I spoke with Hobbs. Mark called last night, astonished that Hobbs really had asked him for help. He has his reservations of course, but he's prepared for whatever might happen at any point along the way—as long as he doesn't let his guard down, he will do just fine. Today Hobbs called to tell me that he asked Mark for help and Mark had agreed, and they had their first training session this morning. Hobbs is a lot less certain than Mark about this Immortality business, as he called it. He's much more interested in the end result than in the process of achieving it." 

"I suppose we all were in the beginning. Amanda, you were Mark's trainer. Beyond that you have no business getting involved in his relationship with Hobbs. You should get out of it and stay out of it before someone gets hurt. Neither of them needs for you to run interference." 

"I wasn't his trainer, exactly. Mark was already experienced with a sword before he became Immortal. I just explained the rules to him, introduced him around, filled in the gaps, you know—the hows and whys as best any of us know them. I haven't done anything wrong! I just wanted to smooth the path between Mark and his stepfather, make this transition a little easier for both of them. And it worked!" 

"And now they are both confiding in you, each unaware of the other's relationship with you. It's dangerous, Amanda. End it, now. Haven't you been in Paris long enough? Maybe now is a good time for you to move on. Call Mark and tell him goodbye. He won't think a thing about it; you'll be out of the picture, and he and Hobbs can work things about for themselves." 

"You're making entirely too big a deal out of this, Duncan! I'm helping them both and neither of them ever have to know the whole story." 

"Until Mark decides to introduce you to Hobbs. Or vice versa." 

"That is not going to happen. They may be teacher and student, but they will never share friends and social circles. Now . . . " she abandoned her chair, walked behind him and draped her arms around his shoulders, nibbling at his ear. 

"What about dessert?" Duncan resisted. 

"I brought fortune cookies," she nuzzled the back of his neck. 

"We make our own fortunes," Duncan retorted. 

"Well, then, Love," she pulled him up from the chair. "Let's go make ours." 

Duncan allowed himself to be led to the bedroom, shedding his concerns as Amanda shed her clothing, piece by piece, along the way. 

§ § § 

The day before, Jake had trailed Mark Wainwright to lunch, figuring that he was safe enough at the bank. He had drifted over to Hobbs' apartment, found the nearest church, and idled there for a while. This morning, Jake followed Hobbs from the fencing club to the Centre, marveling that a man who had set minders on so many others might be, himself, "minded." Hobbs was so self-absorbed that he didn't notice other people, and was so undiscerning about them that he had no idea how much irritation he caused. 

It hadn't been hard to recruit a few Hearts-playing, bored spooks to keep an eye on Hobbs, who seemed to be preoccupied. The archivist mentioned that Hobbs had sent an assistant to sort through old property records, seeking estates that hadn't changed hands for long periods. 

To facilitate tracking, the building where Hobbs and his wife lived had been given little bags of product samples, hung at each door after a suitable gift to the concierge. The shampoo samples the Hobbses received were amended with "fairy dust," which showed up as a blinding white on certain scopes and films. The generous supply of a very good shampoo ought to create a halo effect for some time to come, Jake considered. 

When he heard about the business of the deed searches, Jake wandered down to the barge, just in time to see a woman leaving. He grinned at her departing back, swaying hips, and the bounce in her step. When Duncan came to the door, he had a sated, lazy look to him, which Jake carefully ignored. 

There was a chess game in progress on a board, which looked evenly matched. Jake raised his eyebrows at Duncan, got a nod, and moved the black queen's knight. 

"Your friend play chess?" he asked, nodding toward the door. 

"Not on a board," Duncan replied, moving a bishop to counter the knight. 

Between moves, Jake sketched, automatically, producing drawings of Amanda, walking up the quay, leaning on a churchyard wall talking to Hobbs, sitting at a tiny bistro table deep in conversation with Wainwright. Even upside-down, they were recognizable, and Duncan's mouth tightened a little as he looked at them. 

" _P're et fils,_ so to speak," Jake said. 

"I told her it was a bad idea. I'm hoping she'll leave Paris." 

They played for a while in silence. Jake picked up a bishop, and used its base to tip over one of Duncan's pawns. "It's a very bad idea. Hobbs is likely to try to take her on the grounds that she's a woman, and a good target. I've known him for a long time, and I've never known him to play by the rules if he thought he could bend them." 

"If he takes Amanda's head, it will be his last." 

Jake noted a distinct chill in the room. 

"You know, Mac, France doesn't have the death penalty, hasn't for twenty years. What happens to you guys in prison?" 

"We get bored, just like anyone else." 

"I knew Lew Wainwright. I don't want his son to have to kill Hobbs, and I sure don't want Mark to be killed by him. It'll come down to that, one day, maybe not so far off. You're in this, because I got you in, and I'm sorry now that I did. I didn't see any of this coming. There's no reason for Mark to be. I could take Hobbs out, or you could. Or we could set him up. Once you were in it, you had your own reasons for doing what you did, but Mark isn't going to pay for it." He reached over to the side of the board where the captured pieces stood, and picked up a pawn. He played with it, under the table, and offered two fists for selection. "Pick. Pawn gets to be bait." 

Duncan waved the hands away. "I'm harder to kill than you are, Jake. You play clean-up." 

§ § § 

Who did they think they were anyway, trying to play head games with the best damned spook in the Centre, the most covert of all of Uncle Sam's intelligence agencies? Hobbs was walking around the block outside of his apartment at a furious clip, trying to bleed off some of the tension of being cooped up all day. 

Mark was beginning to sicken him. Hobbs could have respected it if Lew's brat had swaggered and bullied him on the fencing floor. Instead, he comported himself with careful control, only rarely allowing a hint of self-satisfaction to creep into his voice. Duty and honor above all else. The freaking kid acted more and more like his father every day. 

Somewhat relaxed after his fourth turn around the block, Hobbs slowed his pace and pulled a bag of pistachios from his pocket. He ate them one by one, sucking on each shell to savor its salt and the faint chemical tang from the red dye before cracking them open with his teeth. He discarded the shells on the sidewalk behind him as he went, unconcerned about the trail he was leaving. 

Imagine that bottled blond bimbo spinning tales for him! He had been surprised the day she cornered him outside the church and introduced herself, but had covered it well—a wet-eared first year spook trainee could manage that. He had seen her before, and he knew that she and Mark were more than a little acquainted. 

He remembered Amanda from when he was keeping an eye on Mark at the bank. Hobbs had wanted Louise to cut herself off from the kid, but she refused. It was the only time she had found the spine to stand up to him in all of their years of marriage. It wasn't that Lew's brat paid for the apartment. Housing was expensive in Paris, and if the kid wanted to pay for the apartment, then Hobbs could devote his salary to other, more private pleasures. No, what galled him was the way Louise looked at her son, with a wistful pride that Hobbs hadn't seen since they buried Lew. 

So he had kept tabs on Mark at the bank, hoping to be able to relay to Louise that her little hero had feet of clay. It was especially promising when Amanda came in. Amanda it always was for a first name, but the last name varied in her bank accounts and now in the deeds Hobbs was researching—Montrose, Rosemont, Darieux, le Fauve, and a host of others. She wasn't a platinum blond then, either. In fact, that's what first caught Hobbs' trained eye. He had never seen anyone honest go through so many different hairstyles. He had been convinced that she was up to no good, and that hungry, hopeful look on Mark's face said that he was probably in cahoots with her, but Hobbs couldn't prove a thing. The miserable kid was more of a straight arrow than his whistle-blowing father had been. 

Hobbs stopped walking and took a pistachio from his mouth, red dye staining his fingers. This one had no split in it to help him open it. He considered cracking it open with his teeth, wondering if his new recuperative powers could rebuild a molar, and then discarded the nut on the ground and crushed it under his heel. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his fingers. The dye would be difficult to remove. Good. Louise needed something to keep her busy. 

Mark and Amanda were way out of their league. If those two lightweights wanted to try to mess with his mind, they had another thing coming. Hobbs went back into the building where he lived, rode the tiny elevator upstairs—why did the French make the things as small as phone booths anyway?—and entered his apartment. Louise would be out for a while longer. It gave him time to set his plan in motion. First Mark; Mark had a sword, an elegant and glittering weapon that Hobbs coveted. With Mark's sword, Hobbs could take Amanda. That should be easy enough; her tight clothes evidenced everything underneath them, and there was no room for a sword. 

He called Mark at the bank, counting on his unease at talking about Immortality at work. 

"Mark?" Hobbs began, "Look, I really need a sword." 

Mark chose his words carefully; Hobbs guessed he must have someone in his office. "I said we'd get one for you later." 

"No," Hobbs insisted. "I need it now. I was out for a walk, and I felt one of them . . . one of us," he corrected. 

"You shouldn't have gone. You should stay put." Mark was still constrained in his conversation. 

Hobbs pulled out his trump card, allowing a practiced edge of panic into his voice. "What if someone senses me and comes here to the apartment while your mother is home?" He counted to ten, smiling. He heard a rustling sound, then muffled words. 

"Can you hold for a minute?" Mark asked. In a few minutes he returned to the phone. "Listen, Colonel, you can't just go down to the local _Bricomarché_ and find a sword in between the screwdrivers and the power drills. Finding a good one the right size for you will take time." 

Again panic edge his voice. "I don't have time!" 

"What about that Confederate cavalry saber you're so fond of?" Mark suggested. "The edge is gone, so it will have to be reground." 

"It won't be worth a thing if we do that," Hobbs scoffed, enjoying the game he was playing. 

Mark sounded noble through the phone receiver. "It'll be worth your life, Colonel. A conservator would never regrind an edge for us; we'll have to go . . . I know just the place. Can you meet me somewhere? How about the bar in front of the bank? It's crowded there." 

"Jesus, Mark!" Hobbs replied. "I can't just walk around with a sword; the cops will pick me up or something. What do you want me to do, put it in a paper bag?" He waited a moment or two before continuing, "I think I can make it across the street to the church. Meet me there, Mark. Please?" 

The kid was even easier to maneuver than his father had been. They set a time to meet at the church. Hobbs found the Confederate sword and ran his thumb along it. Nothing. He gave a few experimental bounces with the bladed edge against his forearm. Nothing again. The antique sword wouldn't do to take Mark's head, but Hobbs was only taking it along as a prop anyway. It wasn't as if he had planned to fence with the kid. First the revolver, then Mark's own sword, and then a phone call to Amanda. 

He wasn't sure if he understood all of what Mark said about the rules of Immortality. Holy Ground sounded like the rest of religion, an old wives' tale to keep people under control. Mark might be stupid enough to fall for it, but Hobbs hadn't gotten this far in life by falling for stupid lines. If it lulled the kid into a sense of security to meet in a church, so much the better. Mark had been even more vague about the Quickening part and how one Immortal's strength and power fed another. Even if Hobbs didn't understand everything about how a Quickening worked, he knew all he needed to know about power—get as much as you can any way that you can. 

He wrapped the Confederate sword in a bath towel, arranged a frightened and forlorn look on his face, and headed for the church. 

§ § § 

Mark rescheduled an appointment, explained his way out of a meeting and found someone to take his place at a teleconference, apologizing profusely for the short notice while cursing Hobbs under his breath for disrupting his day, his _life,_ for Christ's sake. The man thought the world revolved around him; well, that was going to change. As soon as Mark met him at the church they were going to have a talk and reach an understanding on a number of levels. His position, and that very temporary, as Hobbs' instructor did not make him responsible for the man's peace of mind, much less for his continued existence. _If not for my mother,_ Mark thought, _I'd tell him where to go and gladly send him on his way._

He grabbed his bag on the way out the door; his sword would not be necessary on Holy Ground, but it was as much a part of him as his own arm and it was against common Immortal sense to be caught without it. Mark felt like a traitor to his own life as he left the bank behind in the middle of a very busy day, abandoning his myriad duties to others, in order to reassure, assist and protect the only enemy he had ever truly known. 

§ § § 

Louise rounded the corner and slowed as she saw Hobbs exit the building and set off down the sidewalk. She watched as he crossed the street and entered the church. The bulge under his coat was a bit too awkward for his arm to conceal, and her curiosity piqued again at her husband's strange behavior over the last several days. She ambled to a bench and took a seat facing the direction he had gone. 

Guilt had been a constant companion from the moment she accepted the Colonel's ring all those years ago. She wondered how many women deliberately made such mistakes, hating themselves for walking into loveless, passive marriages, yet fearing the taunt of permanent loneliness if they turned away the first man who came along. Colonel Hobbs had never done right by her son; Mark was a constant reminder of all that Lew had been, and the Colonel hated him for it; hated her, too, for the smile that lit her eyes at the thought of Lewis and the incredibly brave man he had been, the passionately loving man he had been when they were alone together. 

Colonel Hobbs had never known his real parents. Would it have helped or further damaged the Colonel's relationship with Mark, she wondered, if she had told him that Mark was adopted? But not many people knew that and, as far as Louise was concerned, it was only her business to know. Mark had found out a few years ago; she still wasn't certain how he had known. But he had not been upset, and the knowledge had drawn them even closer than they had been before. 

The Colonel's new habits, however, had specifically to do with Mark, and that made her morbidly uncomfortable. They were both hiding something from her. The underlying mutual hatred was still there, yet they were intentionally spending time together. They had spoken more, in person and via telephone, in the past several days than they had in all the years since she became the Colonel's wife. 

She stiffened on the bench as Mark appeared and entered the church, carrying that infernal bag that accompanied him everywhere—even to church—in the middle of the day? Vast experience assured her that nothing would be accomplished by questioning either man. Her son would simply placate her worries away, and her husband equated any question with outright effrontery. If she was going to find out what they were doing, she would have to conduct her own investigation. 

Louise warmed the bench for a while longer, studying a tall, well-built man close to her own age who loitered casually outside the church wall. His appearance was ordinary and unassuming, yet he stood out from the others who came and went, and she could not quite figure out why. She found his appearance attractive, if overwhelming. After a few moments more, a slender bleached blonde appeared and entered the church. When Louise glanced along the wall again, the older man had disappeared. 

Time interrupted her people-watching pastime and made her restless for action. Louise stood and stretched and smoothed her skirt and headed down the sidewalk, tracing her husband's footsteps to the church. 

As she entered the foyer her ruminations were shattered by a gunshot and a scream. 

§ § § 

Once he and Duncan had agreed on the sting operation, Jake had requisitioned some equipment from Centre, and had set the minders on both Hobbs and Mark. He informed the director, a man he knew from other occasions, that he suspected that Hobbs was becoming unbalanced, a notion which came as no surprise to Ed Merrick. 

Reports fed into Jake's earpiece steadily, tracking Hobbs leaving the apartment, Mark leaving the bank, both of them on paths that would converge at the church: a plan gone disastrously awry. This wasn't the way it was supposed to work, Jake thought. Duncan was to be the bait, or himself, but somehow it was going to be Mark, and so far, only one of the men was in place, up in the choir loft. 

Maybe Duncan was in the vestry, but he hadn't checked in yet, and _oh, damn,_ there went Amanda. She wasn't to be there at all, and even worse, neither was Louise Hobbs, who, _please God,_ wouldn't recognize him from a funeral so long ago. 

He had just sidled through the door when the shot came, and Mark collapsed. He saw Hobbs at the altar railing, discarding a revolver in favor of an old saber of some sort. 

Afterwards, when the police were questioning him in hospital, Jake had no idea how he had covered the length of the aisle to shove his arm between Mark's unprotected neck and the descending sword Hobbs wielded. 

It was only the bluntness of the old saber that saved him at all. As it was, his right forearm hung limp in its cut jacket sleeve, pouring blood, with a joint like a second elbow about half-way to his wrist. There was no feeling in that arm at all, but his left hand spread itself around Hobbs' throat, crushing it. Jake shook Hobbs, snarling at him, unable to hear Duncan or the three other men who pulled at him, trying to pry his fingers loose. Finally, when they had choked him into unconsciousness, the fingers released. 

Standing in the choir loft on the organist's seat, the photographer had an excellent, beautifully framed and lit film of the entire sequence. 

Duncan jerked his head at Amanda, sending her to get Louise Hobbs, standing just inside the door, out of the church before the gendarmes got there. This took whispered reassurances, physical persuasion, and happened none too soon. If Hobbs hadn't seen her, he couldn't try to coerce her testimony. Duncan snapped into his throat mike, "Report." 

"Ambulance, one minute out." 

"Police, two minutes." 

"Centre informed of incident involving field personnel." 

He glanced up at the choir loft, got a thumbs-up from the cameraman, who had stopped filming just as Jake had been pulled off Hobbs. The dropped gun lay untouched where it had bounced on the carpeting. 

Stripping themselves of the audio equipment, the three minders and Duncan produced tour guides, stuck them conspicuously in outside pockets, and Duncan himself looked hopelessly lost. 

By the time the ambulance and police arrived, there was a corpse on the floor, a rapidly recovering but confused Hobbs getting to his feet, Jake cradling his right arm in his left, and a surfeit of terrified tourists all trying to tell their stories at once. 

A shot, a shot, there had been a shot, and then that man, the tourists all agreed, had tried to attack the fallen man with a sword. Only the bravery of the man with the broken arm had prevented it. The man with the broken arm was quiet, obviously in shock, but the tourists more than made up for his silence, flooding the newcomers with far more information than they could process. 

Hobbs, coming around more rapidly now, tried to get control of the situation, but was simply overwhelmed by the loud accusations: murderer. He had tried to kill the young man, twice. 

"Don't be ridiculous! Do you know who I am?" he was sure that if he alone could assert his authority, this whole thing could be made to disappear. "You, Anderson! Tell these people who I am!" 

"You, sir?" the man addressed as Anderson replied. "I have no idea who you are. I was just here to see the church, and you, you shot this poor man." 

"MacLeod? Tell them!" 

"Tell them what? I don't believe we've met." He produced an international driver's license in the name of Alfred Betters, complete with a very good likeness of him, and offered it to the police, along with the name of a hotel. The minders, too, had identification, showing them to be foreign nationals, and Jake, of course, was American, but someone else had to fish out his wallet to show it. 

By the time the director of the Centre arrived, Jake had been shipped off to medical care and Mark to the morgue. The police were trying to make sense out of the conflicting stories provided by the tourists. The man with the camera had not volunteered that he had filmed the events, and the inspector in charge had concluded that Mr. Betters was probably borderline retarded. 

"Ed! There's been a balls-up here, tell them who I am," Hobbs started as soon as he saw Merrick come in. 

"Kevin," Merrick said in tones of stark disbelief, "Was that Mark? What on earth has happened here? Is he dead?" 

"No, no, he can't be killed, and neither can I. It's all a mistake!" 

"Kevin, you've been working awfully hard, lately. We've been worried about you," he said, and as an aside to the inspector, "He lost a couple of accounts, and I'm sure it made some financial difficulty for him, but I had no idea . . ." 

"Ed, tell them!" Hobbs tried to scream at him, but it came out badly, a half-croak that wasn't very impressive. 

Merrick sighed, and said, "He's been in machinery sales for us for a long time, of course, we'll take care of medical expenses for him, and . . ." 

By this time, the inspector had about decided that all Americans were _non compos,_ and explained with exaggerated patience, "M'sieu Merrick, this isn't a medical problem only; this is a murder. He will be facing charges. We will have to confine him. He will have to stand trial." 

"Try me? You fools, you might as well save your time. You can't kill me!" 

"Oh, no, m'sieu, of course not. We are a civilized country. We abolished the death penalty twenty years ago. But there are still prisons. It may well be that you will make one's acquaintance." 

Merrick made an exaggerated shrug, indicating a certain lack of mental stability in Hobbs, handed the inspector one of his cards, and managed to get turned entirely away before the smile overtook him completely. One less problem in the Paris operations. Now, if only Chisholm didn't lose the use of that arm. 

The police spent hours questioning Duncan, the tourist with the camera, and the other minders. They finally seemed to agree on what happened, with minor discrepancies. Of course, they would return should the man go to trial, but, they tsked, he seemed a little strange. Nobody mentioned that the young man who had been attacked was Hobbs' stepson; the police could be counted on to find that out for themselves, and there was, of course, no way the tourists could have known that. 

Duncan was having a hard time feigning stupid indifference. He wanted badly to get Amanda to the morgue to collect Mark, and someone had to prep Louise Hobbs before the bad news came about her husband and son. Finally, they let him go. 

§ § § 

Louise stood before the garish gilt-framed mirror that hung in the dark, paneled hallway of their apartment. Her eyes passed to the eagle carved in high relief at the top, clutching a star-spangled shield in one claw and a quiver of arrows in the other. The Colonel had bought it for her for their tenth wedding anniversary. 

She had stood in this place before. Not this city, this apartment, this mirror, but still the same empty place in her soul. The blond woman—what was her name?—made another solicitous trip by Louise, this time taking away the empty tumbler of brandy. 

Louise ran numb fingers over her face, noting the gray in her hair, stray grays even in her eyebrows now, the fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She felt the deep lines that ran from her nose to the corners of her mouth that hadn't been there a day before. She had stood so once, all those years before when Lew died, and bade farewell to her youth as well as to her husband. In a single day, she had passed from youth to middle age. First Lew and now Mark. Blood-shot brown eyes stared back at her from the mirror. Today she had passed into old age, long before her time. 

The woman—yes, Amanda, that was her name—pulled Louise gently away from the empty reflection in the mirror, led her to the living room, lit by bright, slanting bars of late afternoon sun, and placed another tumbler of brandy in her hand. The dear thing had tried to tell her that Mark was fine, but even if Louise hadn't seen too much at the church, the police had confirmed her worst fears. 

Louise's mouth moved and her head nodded as she counted the number of seats in the living room. Three spaces on the couch, the armchair, the pair of little antique fruitwood chairs, the overstuffed chair in the corner, the ottoman. Eight chairs from the dining room set. That wasn't enough. She would need to see about renting chairs for the reception after the funeral. She took another gulp of brandy and grimaced as it burned her throat. 

Amanda took the tumbler from Louise and placed it on the low walnut table by her side of the couch. She wrapped Louise's cold and trembling hands in her warm ones and rested her blonde head against the graying one. _This is just the kind of young woman that Mark should bring home,_ Louise thought. Her next breath caught in her throat. Mark wasn't ever coming home again. The brandy should start working soon. She closed her eyes against the bright afternoon sun and waited. 

§ § § 

His fingers and toes were cold; the rest of him was cold, too, as cold as he'd ever been. His heart thudded wildly and erratically in his chest. Had it been beating before? He felt a searing pain in his left shoulder and agony as his lungs pulled hard for breath. The sudden movement forced his body into painful spasms, arms flinging to the side, head jerking upward. 

His head and arms connected painfully with cold, metallic surfaces. Mark struggled to open his eyes, willed them to open, and gasped when he realized that they already were open, but that he was in pitch-blackness. The air was stale; something covered his face. 

_I was at the bank,_ he thought, _and there was a robbery, and someone had a gun._ No, the robbery was the first time he had died. Memories of the second were beginning to coalesce—the church, Hobbs, a gun. _On Holy Ground? Doesn't the man respect anything?_ Mark clenched his fists in anger at Hobbs. Again his arms made contact with hard, confining walls. 

Had they buried him alive? It was becoming hard to breathe. He reached out to touch the cold metal that confined him, pushed hard against it. He felt a soft, fine piece of fabric cover his face, managed to inch it away from his mouth and nose, and breathed more easily. There was no room to bring his hands up to his chest, so Mark bent his elbows the little bit he could and pushed up hard against the ceiling, striving to turn his feelings of panic into strength. He felt the slab underneath him shift from side to side. He ran his fingers over the slick, brushed metal surfaces that surrounded him, touched as much of his body as the tight space permitted, and realized that he wasn't dressed and wasn't in a padded coffin. 

Mark whispered a prayer he never thought he'd utter, "Please, God, let me be in the morgue." He couldn't move, certainly couldn't cry out for help. He opened his eyes in the darkness and waited. 

§ § § 

If certain liabilities had been immobilized, yet the assets had also been drastically reduced. Duncan counted them off—Mark dead, Jake hospitalized, Louise incapacitated by grief, Amanda assuming the role of caregiver, various assistants from the Centre who knew too little to be of much value in the tasks remaining—out of fingers and options, he made his way to Louise's apartment. Amanda quietly admitted him, motioning for silence in deference to the woman sleeping on the sofa. 

"Can you get away for a while? Come with me to the morgue?" 

"I don't want her to wake up and find herself alone." 

"Doesn't she have any friends, neighbors you could call? Just for a little while?" 

Amanda's expression ventured beyond empathy, stopping short of anger. "Colonel Hobbs was her life. He insisted upon it. If Mark had not taken her out from time to time, if errands were not occasionally necessary, she would hardly have left this apartment at all." Amanda pulled her rising voice back under control. "Why has she subjected herself to such treatment all these years! She could have done so much better for herself. A mistake is one thing, but to deliberately remain miserable, to sentence oneself to such a hateful destiny—she made the choice that got her where she is right now. I sympathize with her, but I don't understand." 

Duncan squeezed her shoulder in reproach. "Not everyone is endowed with independence and strength. We may consider it a fault, a weakness or deficiency, but it is not for us to judge or blame. What she lacks in one area, she abundantly recompenses in others; we're not perfect either, and I dare say some of Louise's finer qualities could tremendously enhance both our personalities." 

Amanda acquiesced, blinking hard as tears nevertheless stole down her cheeks. Duncan hugged her and she responded with a quick squeeze before pushing him away. "Go get Mark," she ordered. "Tell Jake thanks, if you see him, for saving all our lives." 

Duncan had made all of three steps outside the building when a flustered Merrick appeared in his path and took him by both arms. "He's gone." 

"Who? What?" 

Merrick inhaled deeply, looked Duncan in the eye. "Colonel Hobbs is missing. The inspector lost contact with their car and went to investigate. Found it down an embankment; both officers had been knocked out cold, were bound and gagged with their own clothing. They've got men everywhere, and I've dispatched every available warm body from the Centre to search for him. I volunteered to check his apartment." 

Duncan's jaw tightened. "I was just there; he's not." 

"We've got a job on our hands," Merrick lamented. "Hobbs is a military veteran, an intelligence expert. War is war to him; offense and defense are one and the same. Bend, break, ignore the rules as necessary to win. He knows how to fight; he knows how to hide. If he really is becoming delusional, that's another strike against us. It could make him all the more unpredictable." 

"Perhaps." Duncan's mind was racing; he had not set the whole sequence in motion, had in fact attempted to stop Hobbs by effecting his Immortality. In closing one door, however, he had diverted Hobbs' focus down an even deadlier path. He grasped Merrick's hand. "Would you stay at the apartment," he asked, "with Louise and Amanda? Make certain someone is with them at all times, that they are not left alone. There is something I have to do. It might take a while." 

"You wouldn't leave town at a time like this," Merrick joked weakly. 

"Not hardly," Duncan replied and hurried away, leaving Merrick to ponder consequences with potential that ran deeper than the director could imagine. 

Duncan picked up his pace, urgency producing an adrenaline high. "Jake; I have to talk to Jake, and get Mark. I have to get Mark, and talk to Jake." He broke into a run, repeating the mantra over and again, cursing his inability to be in two places at once and his indecision as to which friend might be in the most desperate need. 

§ § § 

Mark chafed under constriction, both of body and mind. Anger at Hobbs had built to a dangerous level and, having no outlet, simmered white-hot within his very essence. When he got out of here, and he was confident that he would very soon, there would be one goal on his agenda, that being the permanent end of Colonel Kevin Hobbs. Uncertainty added malice to his intent; he had seen Amanda, heard her scream, had seen his mother with her hands to her face, horror in her eyes, as death swallowed him down. If Hobbs had directed so much as an ill thought against either of them- 

There was noise at his feet, vibration, and light abruptly entered his temporary tomb. He was slid out on his tray like a drawer from a filing cabinet, and gratefully gulped at the fresh, cool air as he knuckled his eyes and blinked in an effort to identify his liberator. 

§ § § 

Under Jake's bed, chunks of broken pencils bore silent witness to the frustration of a right-handed man trying to draw with his left. 

Five hours out of surgery, Jake was fairly alert and oriented, ravenous, but in a substantial level of pain, refusing drugs. He figured he could use the pain to help himself concentrate, to stay awake. 

He was furious with himself for misunderstanding the situation, allowing Hobbs to kill Mark. He halfway believed Duncan when he said that only decapitation could kill Mark, or Hobbs, for that matter. Still, so far as Jake was concerned, Hobbs was a dead man, even if he, personally, had to feed him through a meat grinder. 

A nurse coming in to take his temperature changed her mind, seeing the cold smile he wore. She returned with a supervisor, a no-nonsense woman who saw no reason for the younger woman's alarm, the wolfish grin having been replaced by a grimace of pain. The supervisor touched the tips of Jake's fingers, checked the flow of the IV antibiotics, and watched the nurse take his blood pressure. "M. Chisholm, you really ought to let us give you something for pain. You have to sleep tonight." 

"Maybe later. Not just yet." He had to keep his mind clear in case Duncan showed up, to tell him what he had long suspected of Hobbs. 

Duncan approached the door silently, but the man in the bed was watching, waiting for him. The cast on his arm ran from well above the elbow to the last joint of his fingers, immobilizing the bones of his forearm, his wrist and elbow. 

When Duncan got to the hospital room, he wished that just this once, he could give Jake his own healing capacity. The idea that the man's artistic ability might be erased infuriated Duncan. Hobbs had so thoughtlessly destroyed so much: his stepson, his wife's pleasure in life, perhaps Jake's arm, and all the drawings he hadn't yet made. 

Jake offered his left hand to be shaken, an awkward arrangement at best. Duncan gave him the bad news first. "Merrick said that Hobbs got away from the gendarmes." 

"Oh, great." 

"Yeah. So, where does he go when he's up to no good?" 

"He drinks a little. He's got a girlfriend. I'd start there." Jake gave Duncan the address and added, "Hobbs isn't going to be able to get into the Centre anymore, but he just might go to the morgue and have another try at Mark. Oh, and he likes to ride the Metro. He watches people. I think he pretends he's still running agents. But he's not careful. He's not 360 degree watchful; he's easy to tail. Anderson said it was like Hansel and Gretel, the way he was dropping pistachio shells. They didn't even need the scopes for the fairy dust." 

"Fairy dust?" Duncan asked. 

"Yeah, we gave them some samples of stuff, some shampoo. It's like fluorescein dye, only not in the visible spectrum. Get Merrick to give you a scope. You can track him in the dark, light, whatever. It takes a week or so to wash out, even once you stop using it. Hobbs was using it, but I don't know about Mark. How is Mark?" 

"Haven't been there, yet. How's the arm?" 

"Fingers are warm, hurts like hell. They say that's a good sign. MacLeod . . . take care of Mark, all right? And get Hobbs." 

"It'll cost you ten pounds." 

"Is that all? Cheap at the price. Sic 'em, tiger. Get me a couple of minders up here, would you? Tell Merrick we need someone Hobbs has never seen. I need to get some sleep, and this thing is bad enough that they're going to have to sock me down pretty good. Get that cute little redhead in here." 

"I think she was just leaving when I came up the elevator. Freckles?" 

"Like a setter pup. Well, someone. But get the minders here, first. There's a tenner in my billfold. I'll make it twenty if you can find out if he arranged Wainwright's accident." 

"Go to hell, Chisholm." The two men grinned at each other in perfect understanding, and Duncan went off to phone for men to stand guard over Jake's sleep. 

§ § § 

Mark and the midnight shift pathologist stared at each other, but Mark reacted first, sitting up on the gurney and wrapping the shroud around himself like a toga. He didn't flinch when she reached out to touch his face, but merely took her fingers in his own warm hand, saying, "We can't go on meeting this way." 

It was such an incongruous comment that she was jolted into laughter. 

"I need a favor," Mark continued. "For the time being, I'm better off dead. Do you have any unclaimed bodies that look more or less like me? It'll be a free funeral—since I won't need one." 

"I'm supposed to autopsy you." 

"I feel sure it would hurt." 

The pathologist stared at Mark, bent over to read the tag on his toe. 

"You were shot. Pronounced at 3:18 p.m., and you really ought to be set up by now." 

"Somebody made a mistake, I guess, but I really do need to be out of sight for a while." Mark reached behind him to pick up the bullet, which had fallen out of his shoulder, took up her hand, and pressed it into her palm. "Evidence," he said, smiling. I won't be here, but it will." He was being determinedly charming, though mourning his lost job, his lost life. 

Once she got her mind around the idea that she hadn't pulled a cadaver out of the cooler, Dr. Belleau held up rather well. She handed Mark a set of scrubs, then she went through her files to turn up a similar, truly dead corpse, a man of the right age who had been homeless. She made the changes, all the while wondering what would happen to her license if any of this ever came to light. 

Now, Mark thought, there was just the little problem of getting himself out of the morgue. As he sat riffling through post-mortem reports and claim forms for bodies, he was struck by inspiration. If his mother claimed his body, of course it would be gone. Slowly, he picked up the phone at the Dr. Belleau's desk, and punched in the number at his mother's apartment, trying to think of some tactful way to break all this to her. 

Amanda answered, and Mark's mind shifted into high gear. "Amanda," he said hopefully, "Are you any good at forgery?" 

§ § § 

Hobbs sank into the deep green cushions of the sofa and propped his feet on the antique coffee table in front of it. He had been in the apartment less than five minutes with no notice that he was arriving, and Gina had already brought chilled champagne, cut crystal flutes, and a tray of oysters, caviar, and rounds of toasted bread. He didn't know how she did it, but he didn't care either. Gina knew which side of her bread was buttered, and she knew that Hobbs did the buttering, too. 

Gina unbuttoned the top few buttons on Hobbs' shirt and handed him a glass of champagne. Her long black hair spilled across his arm as she reached to the table for a shucked oyster. Hobbs grinned broadly. Gina was a winner. She had a body she worked hard to keep in shape; she was smart enough to act stupid and keep her luscious mouth shut; and she could eat an oyster in the most provocative way Hobbs could ever imagine. Best of all, she had gone out with Mark once or twice, and was wise enough to the ways of the world to trade up to a colonel. 

"Honey, how about you change into something sexy for me? Something I haven't seen before," he told her in between sips of champagne. She tipped another shell back and smiled at him as she swallowed the oyster. She kissed him deeply before heading off to the bedroom to comply with his request. Hobbs closed his eyes for a moment and savored the briny taste her kiss had left in his mouth. 

Hobbs kicked off his shoes and let them fall to the Aubusson rug. He wished that he had time to smoke a Cuban, but the police were on his trail and the time he calculated he could afford to spend here he had allotted to other pleasures. There was no sense in waiting here until the gendarmes showed up, but it wasn't any fun if he gave them too big of a lead, either. 

Damn, there was nothing he loved better than the thrill of the chase, especially when he was so certain that he would come out on top! He hadn't felt this exhilarated since Nam, when he had first discovered that someone with his training for covert operations could turn his obvious skills and talents to a profit in a little unofficial side business. There were temples all over the countryside ripe for plunder and more than a few art dealers in the States who turned a blind eye to provenance. 

Hobbs tossed an empty oyster shell back onto the silver tray. A line from Shakespeare came unbidden to his mind. _Why, the world's mine oyster._ Immortality had confirmed what he had known more than thirty years ago, that he was head and shoulders above the rest, not constrained by the rules that bound the others. 

When Hobbs' sources dried up in Vietnam, he moved into Laos and then into Cambodia. Then the Soviet Union fell, and its people became more interested in saving their skin than their art. By the time it got too expensive to compete with the Russian Mafia, the current Western fascination with Eastern art and artifacts had given Hobbs reason to renew his contacts in Southeast Asia. Except for Wainwright's interference—which he had put a permanent stop to—it had all gone off without a hitch for years, as befitted Hobbs, a man set apart from the rest. 

He loosened his belt and finished the champagne. Where was Gina? He told himself to be patient. She was always worth the wait, and the longer the wait, the more likely it was that she had something special in mind for him. 

Shakespeare came to the front of his thoughts again, and this time the line played itself out in his mind. _Why, the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open._ He didn't have a sword yet, but he knew where to get one. He slid open the drawer of the end table and removed a semi-automatic pistol and a clip. All Immortals had swords, and Hobbs would be happy to relieve them of their weapons after he had used the pistol. 

Who should he go after first? He wanted Mark so bad he could taste it, but he would run right to his mother, and the police would look there first. Forthright and honest just like his old man. Lew must have taught it to the brat. Mark sure didn't inherit it from his adopted father, now did he? The thought that Wainwright hadn't engendered Mark gave Hobbs a curious satisfaction. Mark was probably untouchable now. Who else? Hobbs knew where MacLeod lived, and he deserved to be killed painfully and more than once before losing his head. Chisholm was an easy target, too, with one broken arm. 

The bedroom door opened, and Gina emerged, dressed in lingerie that took Hobbs' mind off his plans for a little while. That's what he came here for, a little R &R before going back into action. She sat next to him, curling long legs underneath her. She buttered a toast round and heaped caviar on it. As she brought it to her mouth, a bit of caviar tumbled between her breasts. Hobbs obligingly plucked each black grain from her golden skin with his lips. He looked up at her and said, "You know, Gina, you would look fantastic with short, platinum blond hair." 

§ § § 

"I'll call you back." Mark hung up the telephone and turned from the desk as Dr. Belleau appeared to convey a message he had already received: someone wanted to see him. 

"I told him corpses aren't much for conversation, but he is demanding a look at you." 

Mark's laughter covered his apprehension as he cast about for anything that might be used as a weapon and came up wanting. "Well, I did prove you wrong about that." 

"No, you did not. You are not a corpse. I told the man I would list the identities of those brought in this afternoon. He is waiting." She gave Mark a suspicious look, then relented as though losing a battle with better judgment. 

"Monsieur, I respect your need for privacy, but this is very strange. He wanted me to tell you something, even when I insisted there was no other living person here and that I did not know if you were among the deceased. He seemed certain he would find you here alive." Dr. Belleau stilled the slight trembling of her fingers by braiding them tightly around a paperweight, a pewter version of comedy and tragedy. 

"Are you involved in theater?" Mark glanced abstractly across the desk. 

" _Passe-temps,_ " she shrugged, releasing the masks. 

"What did he ask you to tell me?" 

"The Colonel is _en prise._ " 

Mark smiled, weak with relief, and dropped a vicious little letter opener beside the paperweight. 

Dr. Belleau stared at him. "You understand that? It means something to you?" 

"He's my friend," Mark assured her. "Please let him in." 

§ § § 

"Pretty lady," Duncan threw an appreciative glance over his shoulder as they departed the morgue. 

"Nice, better yet. Smart. Is my mother all right? I was talking to Amanda, but didn't have a chance to finish the conversation. How is Jake? Where is Hobbs?" 

"Get in the car, and breathe between questions." 

"Where are we going?" 

"You are dead. We don't have a lot of options. We'll go to the barge." 

"No. Take me to Mom's apartment. I want to see her." 

Duncan winced. 

"What? She's okay, isn't she? If Hobbs has laid one hand on her—" 

"No, no, she's fine. As you said, Amanda is staying with her, and Merrick has assigned minders to look after them both." Duncan gestured helplessly with one hand while driving with the other. "She saw you die, Mark. You were pronounced dead at the scene. She saw your face covered, saw you carried away. Normally when an Immortal dies, especially in public, he or she finds a new home and builds a new life. Although it hurts to leave behind family and friends, it is the intelligent thing to do. It would be better for you to come home with me." 

"I can't leave my mother, not like this. We are all each other have left. I will explain it to her, somehow." 

"Somehow" hung heavy, dissipated slowly, as Duncan navigated a series of turns. 

"To answer your other question, Jake is recovering. He endured a rather complicated surgery and he gets to keep the arm, but what use he'll get out of it remains in question." 

Mark looked askance at Duncan, who realized that while Mark had seen Jake in the church, the young man had no idea that Jake had saved his life. 

"Let's drive for a while before we go home," he suggested, "and I'll tell you the whole story as I know it. You want to rough out a prologue?" 

"My sword," Mark smacked fist into palm. "When I entered the church, I dropped my bag on the back pew and went up front to talk to Hobbs." 

"It's in the back seat. Then?" 

Mark reached around and felt the reassuring fabric of the bag, the familiar shape of his sword inside. "He didn't see me leave it there. He was standing on the altar with his back to me. When I reached him, he asked why I had arrived without my sword. I told him we did not need weapons in the sanctuary because we were on Holy Ground. He said some folks believed the old adage that nothing was sacred. He said he was one of them. Then he pulled out his pistol and shot me. I saw him raising that old saber. I heard Amanda yell, I saw Jake and my mother, and I woke up in the morgue." 

MacLeod was silent for a time. "You want a drink?" 

Mark's stomach growled in response. 

"Let's at least stop by the barge for a snack. There are some things you need to know about Colonel Hobbs." He bounced a look off Mark, a convoluted expression of sympathy and trepidation. 

"Is this going to hurt?" Mark attempted a smile and failed. 

"Worse than you can imagine," Duncan responded, and Mark decided that waiting was not necessarily a bad thing, when one had all the time in the world. 

§ § § 

When Duncan and Mark got to the barge to collect some groceries for a late-night snack, two men were deep in conversation at the edge of the river wall. 

Duncan held up a cautionary finger, although both had felt the warning. One of the figures was familiar, though, and he relaxed. 

"Is this what it takes to keep you out of my beer, Adam?" Duncan was careful to address Methos as Adam Pierson in front of Mark 

Duncan had never seen Methos' companion, but the other man nodded to him in recognition, and handed him a package before melting back into the shadows. 

Methos looked at Mark, appraisingly. "So, this is our little Hamlet. I know where Claudius is; how is Gertrude holding up?" 

Mark's mind worked through the allusion, and he grabbed Methos' shoulder, turning him roughly. "Did he kill my father?" 

"Very good, Mark. Yes. Your father died because he knew too much, and then Hobbs built his house on another man's ground. My good Mr. MacLeod, might I have some of your excellent Guinness?" 

Mark had stayed near the door, as if to leave immediately. Methos walked over to him, stood unbuttoning his coat as if he were a small child, took it off his shoulders, threw it over a chair back, and very gently led him to sit down. 

"You are going to have a very bad night, no matter what happens next. Have a beer," Methos said, his voice quiet. 

"When I was at the Centre," he went on, "Hobbs would come in to interrogate me. Except, he didn't want to know about me, he wanted me to know about him. He wanted to brag. He thought he was talking to a dead man, and that it would never matter what he said. Unfortunately . . ." Methos tilted his head to one side, ruefully. 

"He would tell the technicians to turn off the cameras and pick-ups, but they were bored and curious. He is not a likable man, and had no friends there. I found out from your guard out there that Merrick had given Hobbs this 'Longevity' project just to keep him out of trouble. As luck would have it, Hobbs knew just enough to be dangerous, and I was careless one day, so he got his hands on me." 

"Where is he now?" Mark asked. 

"He's at his girlfriend's. She'll keep him occupied for a while, and there's back-up there. I figure we have about an hour, and you need to make some decisions. For one thing, you're dead." 

"So Mac keeps telling me. But I have to talk to my mother." 

"Do you remember what became of Gertrude? She died, drinking poison intended for her son. In this case, that would be you. Son and poison, both. You can't go back. 

"I will give you a choice. You can take care of Hobbs, now, tonight, and have it over with, your mother free of him forever. Or, you can go comfort your mother, and he might very well slip the hounds while you're doing it. You won't be doing your mother any favors, turning up. 

"Dead is dead, Mark, from the point of view of most people. They don't adjust well to the idea that you live on and they will not. She saw you get shot. She knows that you're dead. That, she can live with. Duncan, what happened when your father found out about you?" 

Duncan said nothing, but Mark couldn't miss the tightening of his face, the bleakness in his eyes, the drooping lost-child slump of his shoulders. 

Mark's mind caught up with the other things Methos had said. "Girlfriend? That bastard has a girlfriend?" 

"She's a cute Italian girl, Gina Licata. She's a pro, but of course Hobbs thinks she's all his. She lives over at . . ." 

"I know where she lives." 

Adam said nothing, just raised his eyebrows. 

They sat there in silence, listening to the wake from a passing boat lapping the side of the barge. 

Slowly, like a much older man, Mark stood, headed for the chair where Methos had thrown his coat. Duncan stopped him, saying, "Wait." He got one of his own long coats, opened it to show the way it concealed a sword, and held it for Mark to put it on. "You have to revise your wardrobe a little, now. For discretion. I'll take you to Gina's." 

"How did you know?" 

"It's the only thing you can do. There's really no choice at all. It only looked like there was." 

Methos went out to consult with the minder. He came back in to say, "Hobbs is still there. But he's making noises about leaving. We'd better hurry." 

It was amazing how easy it was to park late at night. They watched Hobbs slip out of Gina's window, hurry down the steps to the Metro, walk to the end of the platform, drop to the tracks, and head off into the dark beyond the lights from the passenger area. 

Duncan pulled out the package the minder had given him, and prepared to head in after Hobbs. With a hand laid on his arm, Methos stopped him, took the scope, and handed it to Mark. "Keep an eye on him, Mark. Don't let him get away." 

Duncan dropped down to the tracks to follow Mark. 

Reaching down, Methos offered a hand to help him back up, saying, "Battle is joined. We can't interfere. Mark is part of the Game now." 

Reluctantly, Duncan took Methos' hand, jumped back up onto the station platform, and the two of them climbed the stairs to street level. Leaning up against the fender of the Range Rover, Methos pulled bottles out of his coat pocked, offered one to Duncan. 

"Where did you get that?" 

"Out of the fridge. You're running low. Time to stock up." 

Two minders came up, asking, "Got any more?" and the two bottles were passed, ritually, in turn, among the waiting men. "We let him go, like you asked. Who did you send in there? Do you think he can get Hobbs? Do you want us to run back-up?" Anderson asked Duncan. 

"He's pretty motivated. Hobbs has cost him a lot." 

The four of them leaned against the car, amiably drinking the beer, following in their minds the chase going on below, the hound and his quarry running in silent darkness, each listening for another's footfalls and the pounding of his own heart as a dead man pursued one sure he couldn't die. 

Staring at the entrance to the Metro, Duncan shifted impatiently from one foot to another. He took a sip of beer, held it in his mouth until it was nearly warm, and swallowed it with a grimace, never taking his eyes from the green-painted metal railing that bordered the stairs that Mark had descended. 

Anderson waved his empty beer bottle at Methos and requested, "Adam, pass me another." 

"He's a championship fencer," Duncan said absently. 

Methos uncapped another beer. "Amanda told me." 

The other minder let out a derogatory puff of air. "Oh, that'll do a whole lot of good against an M-9 Beretta." 

Duncan pushed hard away from the car and rapidly strode the half block to the Metro railing. He took slow and deep breaths and catalogued his surroundings. Red, white, and blue bunting for the upcoming Bastille Day celebrations already decorated some of the shop windows that lined the street where the Range Rover was parked. A few strings of lights, unlit so many hours after midnight, were looped overhead. Notices for fireman's balls, street fairs, and fireworks displays were plastered in the window of an empty store. 

Methos joined him at the railing. Duncan tossed the still-unfinished beer into a nearby trashcan and jammed his hands into his pockets. 

"Championship fencers aren't taught how to kill," Duncan said. "They learn cuts and parries, they learn how to score points, but no one teaches them how to do real battle." 

"I know," Methos said . 

"Hobbs doesn't play by the rules, either," Duncan added, making a hesitant move toward the top of the stairs. 

"I've had a more than adequate opportunity to observe that." 

Duncan moved back away from the steps and began peeling a bit of green paint from the metal railing. "He's not ready." 

"We are none of us ready the first time," Methos told him. "He's armed as well as he can be. He has rage on his side; he wants revenge for his father." His fingers wrapped around the neck of his beer bottle, he gestured toward Duncan and asked, "If you had been in his shoes, would you have let your father's murderer go free?" 

Duncan's knuckles were white as he stared into the distance. His voice was dangerous and low. "As a matter of fact, I didn't." 

Methos's eyebrows raised in surprise; for a moment he was mute. He opened his mouth and closed it briefly. When he opened it again, Duncan interrupted before he could speak, turning on him and demanding, "Why did you have to put _Hamlet_ into Mark's head?" 

"It seemed like a perfectly good analogy. Hamlet senior dies, Claudius marries Gertrude, Claudius dies," Methos said without a trace of defensiveness. 

"Hamlet dies, too," Duncan said through clenched teeth. 

"It's a tragedy, MacLeod," Methos stated in a detached and matter-of-fact voice. "Everybody dies." 

A breeze chased a flyer about fireworks across the sidewalk. The brightly colored paper skittered and tumbled down the Metro stairs. 

§ § § 

Jake focused on the junction of two walls and a ceiling, frustrated to the boundaries of his tolerance. By the dim light of the reading lamp with which his minder apologetically consorted, Jake wearily drew a sketch pad across his lap and clamped the fingers of his left hand firmly around another unfortunate pencil. 

_Relax,_ his subconscious whispered, and he would have given anything to comply. Hours ago he had conceded to an injection containing enough painkiller, the nurse alleged, "to numb a horse. You should have been asleep twenty minutes ago," indicating there was more intent to the medication than he had been told 

But it did not matter, because it had not worked. He was aware of the effort; the pain in his arm had subsided to a dull throb akin to a toothache, and his body felt sluggish and heavy with unreliable limbs. His mind, however, applied itself stubbornly to the ravelment engendered by one man who had woven a path of adversity through so many lives, and sleep was not a concept destined to be understood. 

He sorted through the tangle, thread by thread, grimacing at his own involvement in a situation no rational mind would accept as reality. From war veteran across Asia to mall security in Alberta to tracking an Immortal criminal through Paris, and all the hits and misses in between; if he wrote his life story, any editor would issue a flat rejection of book and author for blatant disregard to verisimilitude. 

Uncertainty was a part of living, but within his own mind it had not been allowed to exist. There was no room for it now. He projected an image toward the sketchpad, but his hand would not cooperate. _Slowly . . ._ a deep breath, a clean page, again. _Slowly . . . relax . . ._ Jake released his death grip on the pencil, allowing it to rest gently in his hand; yes, that felt more familiar. He began slowly, a face taking awkward shape in the semi-darkness from a bust near the entrance of the Centre: Marianne. 

Somewhere he had heard that one could enhance personal creativity by changing a routine or by becoming opposite-handed for a day. His sword-wielding friends had extolled the virtues of ambidexterity. He would be ambidextrous within a year, or he would be permanently left-handed. 

Jake closed his eyes, rested, continued. _Slowly . . ._ he wasn't fond of the expurgated versions that modern France had bestowed upon her personification of the Republic, the bare-breasted sculptures designed after a lingerie model. More truth was found in the bygone lady with her long robes, her pikestaff, a bundle of arms at her left hand, whom he had seen in paintings, on postage stamps. He sketched slowly, keeping his fingers loose and, as his thoughts drifted, substituted Marianne's Phrygian bonnet with a sunburst; her pikestaff became an outstretched arm lifting a torch, and he found himself looking somewhat in surprise at a sadly childish rendition of the Statue of Liberty. 

" . . . Equality, Fraternity," Jake finished the thought. 

Adam Pierson, Mark Wainwright, Duncan MacLeod. 

Jake hissed at Moran, and the minder was immediately at his side. Moran didn't blink twice at the request. He helped Jake into his clothing, hoisted him into a wheelchair, and escorted him silently to the end of the hall where a second minder waited near an elevator. Moran motioned at Johnston and the three descended to the ground floor. As they exited the hospital, Jake took a moment to appreciate the magnificent façade that satisfied his idea of a museum more than his preconceived image of a medical facility. 

Moran wheeled Jake into the shadows that surrounded the courtyard and handed him a telephone. The call was answered promptly. "Merrick! I want a current report. Don't waste time on detail, just tell me who is where and what is going on right now." Jake snorted with more vigor than he felt at the automatic question. "I'll tell you where the hell I am. I am lurking in front of the hospital waiting for you to come out here and give me and my boys a ride. Where the hell are you?" 

§ § § 

Merrick slipped the phone into his pocket and handed over the payment, cash in a plain envelope, compensation for keeping her ears open and her mouth shut with Hobbs, and for reversing the process for Merrick, who kissed the back of her hand and let himself out her door. Gina yawned widely as she tucked the envelope into a drawer under layers of lingerie. It had been a long night. 

Merrick knew better than to argue with Jake, but one look at the ashen face and unsteady carriage led him into a battle lost before it was begun. 

"One more time," Jake demanded from the passenger seat. 

Merrick arranged himself more comfortably behind the wheel. "MacLeod and Pierson are waiting by a Metro station with a couple of men from the Centre. Hobbs went for a walk on the tracks and apparently Wainwright has gone after him. Why they all did not go after Hobbs is what I do not understand. 

"We have damning evidence against the Colonel," Merrick continued. "His rather careless footprints traipse through black markets the world over, on and off for nearly forty years. We have proof, names of contacts, buyers. We have hard evidence that Lewis Wainwright had Hobbs figured out and was on the verge of putting him out of business in a variety of ways. We have," he held up a cassette tape in somber triumph, "the braggadocio's vaunt to Gina Licata about his accomplishments, which include effecting the death of Lewis Wainwright and his intentions of murdering Mark Wainwright. Hobbs wants Gina to impersonate Mark's friend Amanda Darieux and thus help him kill Mark. 

"Now I want you to explain something to me," Merrick stared hard at Jake. "I want you to explain how a dead man gets up off a gurney and walks out of a morgue. The records all have him dead at the church, transported to the morgue; Louise Hobbs saw him die and as far as she is concerned, her son is still dead. Hobbs blithers all over this cassette about how he can't die, about how Mark can't die unless somebody cuts off their heads with a sword. He told Gina he is immortal and there are many other immortals out there who all have to be killed the same way until only one of them is left, and he plans to be that one. 

"When I assigned Hobbs the project on longevity, I had no idea he would come up with the notion of living forever and unhinge into a full-blown serial killer, but that appears to be the case. We can catch him, take care of him. That I can handle. What I am having trouble with is that Mark Wainwright's dead body was signed out of the morgue by Duncan MacLeod a couple of hours ago. Since that time several people have seen him alive, including a couple of our own men who are waiting with MacLeod and Pierson right now." 

"Obviously someone made a mistake. Excepting certain religious beliefs, dead men don't become undead, now do they?" 

"I saw the paperwork," Merrick persisted. "Mark Wainwright is officially dead." 

"Of course," Jake scoffed. "We've both worked with government agencies enough to vouch for the infallible accuracy of paperwork." He eyed Merrick with an expression that eventually drew forth a weak laugh of concession, if not of acceptance. 

"You got a Metro map?" 

Merrick spread it across the console between them. 

"Where are MacLeod and Pierson?" 

Merrick silently pointed out the station and Jake took a long hard look at the possibilities. 

"It's four a.m. The Metro won't run for another hour and a half," Jake stated. "Merrick, I want you to drop me off here," he pointed out a station. "Moran, Johnston, here," he pointed out another. "We'll meet somewhere in the middle. Merrick, you check in with MacLeod and see if they know anything they didn't know twenty minutes ago." 

Merrick spluttered unbecomingly as he started the engine. "What exactly do you have in mind?" 

Jake knew Duncan would not be happy with his actions. Duncan and Methos had taken the time one evening over a pasta dinner to explain the Game and its rules, requirements, rewards. He knew that once two of the Chosen were engaged in battle, none other could interfere. 

No other _Immortal_ could interfere. 

Jake Chisholm knew that he was in no shape to go to war. He also knew that Hobbs would not fight fair and that Mark's personal valor was an automatic disadvantage against an opponent to whom cheating was a way of life. Hobbs had seen to the murder of a better man than most, and Jake would not sit idly by and allow Hobbs to break the rules and accomplish the death of that man's only son. He smiled grimly at Merrick as he accepted a pistol from the back seat, balanced it in his left hand. 

"Just taking care of some overdue business for an old friend." 

§ § § 

Dark, dark, alone in the dark, Mark thought, keeping himself oriented by sliding his left foot along the inside of the rail as he followed Hobbs. He stopped, listening, and remembered the thing Pierson had given him. It felt like a sort of camera lens, and when he fumbled off its cover and looked through it up the tracks, there was a little moon bobbing along, slowly, occasionally going into a quarter-phase. 

That must be when Hobbs turned to look behind. The minders said Hobbs had a gun. Bending, groping along the rail, Mark found a piece of ballast stone. He threw it as far ahead as he could, and was rewarded with a muzzle flash. One down. 

Mark grinned in the darkness, and pitched his words low, matching his remembered father's raspy voice. "Hobbsie?" 

The moon stopped, became almost eclipsed, only glowing at the top. Mark laughed, grimly, and went on, "I'm coming for you!" 

"You're dead!" 

"Not really. I just went underground," the voice retorted, stepping to the other side of the tracks. Two more shots, rapid, but wild. Even if he had stood still, Mark thought, Hobbs would have missed. Hobbs ought to be able to feel him, because Mark could feel Hobbs. He ought to be able to use this as a driving pressure, herding him, helping him into panic. 

A quiet whispering voice in Mark's mind advised him, _Slow. He'll do your work for you if you let him. He'll scare himself._

Mark relaxed a little as his mind created help for him, the rough, loving voice of the man who had carried him on his shoulders, taught him his arithmetic tables by heart, cuddled in a big armchair. In the dark, he could feel the strength wrapped around him, half-singing, two times two is . . . _four,_ Mark thought, and waited for the beloved voice to present the next in the series. 

At four times six, he murmured, "twenty-four," and lobbed another stone up the tracks. Another shot. By the time he got through eight times nine, he heard a click ahead, a curse. He slid the familiar sword from the coat Duncan had lent him, its hilt fitting his hand as if carved for it. He used it to probe ahead, keeping a space in front of himself. 

There was a muttering a few yards ahead, a mantra repeating, "Wainwright never had the stuff for the job, never had the stuff." 

"Hobbsie," Mark's harsh voice said, reprovingly, "you deserve to die. You've mucked through too many people's lives, made too many mistakes. You hurt my wife, you hurt my son, and now it's time." 

"No!" Hobbs' voice, rising in fear, was just on the edge of terror, sliding over. "I can't be killed. You don't know how, Lew, you can't kill me." 

The moon of Hobbs' head was almost eclipsed, just about three feet off the ground, as he crouched and stared up in the direction of the accusing voice. The empty Beretta clicked uselessly. 

When he had the location fixed in his mind, Mark silently put the scope in his pocket, took his sword in both hands, and felt another set of hands, heavy, surrounding his own. He swung the sword about level with the tops of his thighs, a scything motion that barely felt the impediment that was Hobbs' neck. The moon went bouncing down the tracks with an ugly thumping sound. 

Mark stood, leaning a little on his sword, its tip digging into one of the ties supporting the rail. A vagrant breeze ruffled his hair a little, like a loving hand. Far in the distance, he heard the wheels of an approaching train squealing against the rails. 

I wonder what MacLeod tells the dry-cleaner, Mark thought, as he shoved the bloody steel down the sheath in the coat. Feeling around in the darkness, he found most of Hobbs, and draped the body across the tracks. Using the scope, he retrieved the moon and laid it outside the rail, near the neck. The screeching of the train was getting closer. Mark stretched himself full-length in the corner the tunnel's wall made with its floor, and waited. 

The train roared past, and Mark picked himself up, wearily trudging in its wake. He got to the end of the platform, put his hands on it, and heaved himself up to sit on it, his legs dangling for a minute. He was still sitting like this when Duncan found him, and helped him to his feet. 

He looked at Duncan, blinking in the light and familiarity after all the craziness of the last hour. "What was all that about Quickenings? I've had worse jolts from toasters." 

"They vary." 

People were beginning to trickle into the station for their morning commutes. The two men climbed the stairs to street level. Watching them emerge, Methos climbed out of the car and walked over. He dug into his pocket and said, "Long day's night, kid. Have a beer." 

§ § § 

Duncan wondered whether the combination of the last few days' stresses and warm beer for breakfast might not be too much for Mark. He hovered casually at his elbow, ready to steady if him if necessary. Muttered oaths and a heavy tumbling sound drew his attention away from Mark to where he should have been standing instead—a half a block away and in front of the Range Rover, two minders stood over Jake's collapsed form. 

"What is he doing here?" Duncan asked incredulously. The three Immortal men raced to Jake. 

"What are you doing, Pierson?" one of the minders asked. The other took a look at Methos' practiced and thorough assessment of Jake's unconscious body, hushed his partner, and pulled out his cell phone. 

"This man should be hospitalized," Methos informed them. 

"Ambulance?" the minder asked. A nod confirmed his question, and he punched numbers into his phone. 

"Can you stay with him, Adam?" Duncan asked. "I better get Mark out of here, and the paramedics have seen a little too much of me lately." 

Methos dismissed Duncan, who gestured for Mark, started up the Range Rover, and maneuvered the car into the morning traffic. 

A check at the hospital later that day proved fruitless. Even Duncan's warmest smile and most charming manner couldn't convince the nurse to admit him to Jake's room. 

"M. Chisholm is allowed no visitors," she told him. 

A long bout of wheedling punctuated by dejected, sad-puppy looks revealed that Jake required intravenous antibiotics as well as surgery to repair the damage he had done to himself while absent from the hospital. The next day and the next and the day after that, Duncan relentlessly but unsuccessfully pestered the hospital staff to gain entry to Jake's room. 

It wasn't until Bastille Day that he was permitted a visit. So used to being barred entry, Duncan half believed that allowing him in to Jake's room was an error on the part of the hospital's overworked holiday skeleton staff. 

He found Jake propped up in bed, his right arm still immobilized in a cast. His left arm had an intravenous needle held in place at the elbow with white adhesive tape. He was drawing with his left hand, moving gingerly. Duncan noted a drastically reduced number of broken pencils scattered on the blanket. 

"Want some company?" Duncan asked. 

Jake's head dropped back on the pillow. "It's about time! If they didn't let someone in here soon, I was going to need a room with rubber wallpaper." 

Duncan moved to the bed and sifted through the drawings that lay there—the view from the hospital window; the hospital door; a flower arrangement next to a water pitcher; Jake's immobilized right arm; Jake's bare feet; Jake's feet under the sheets; Jake's feet partially covered by the sheets. 

"How's the arm?" Duncan asked. 

The corner of Jake's mouth twisted. "They won't know for a while yet. Can't do much security work like this." He stared at the cast for a long time. 

"Mark made it out," Jake said, but his eyes contained a question. 

"Mark made it out." 

Jake ran his left thumb up and down his pencil, his knuckle white. "Did Hobbs?" Duncan gave his head a negative shake. Jake let out a breath. His thumb stilled on the pencil. "Ever find out what happened between him and Lew?" 

"You were right," Duncan told him. "Hobbs arranged Lew's traffic accident." 

Jake pressed his lips together. "I owe you a ten-spot, MacLeod." 

"Nah," he answered. When Jake opened his mouth in protest, Duncan gave a wicked smile and continued, "I took it from your wallet when you were passed out by the Metro." 

"You S.O.B.," Jake grinned. 

"Used it to send a bon voyage card to Mark and his mother. I signed your name for you." 

Jake's eyebrows knit for a moment. "You told me that Louise couldn't know about him. That he was dead to her." 

"Yeah, well," Duncan tilted his head from side to side, fiddled with Jakes's drawings, stacked them up, and smoothed the top sheet of paper. "Merrick saw him alive, some of the personnel from the Centre saw him alive. At that point, it just seemed easier to explain everything to Louise." 

"Is she OK with it? As hard as it is to understand Immortality, at least she gets her son back. They get to be a family again." Jake offered. 

Duncan gave a quick smile. "She seems to be. Some are lucky that way." He left the rest of his thought unfinished. 

Outside the hospital window, the deep staccato booms of fireworks began. Both men searched the skyline for telltale streaks of color against the night sky. 

The sound of the hospital door opening took their attention away from the window. A man in his late forties with silvery hair and beard entered and introduced himself. 

"Good to see you again, Jake," he said as he extended his right hand to Jake's left. "How's the wing?" 

Jake gave a wary and noncommittal look at the newcomer, who continued, "MacLeod here says that he and some friends of his owe you big time. Says you're a good man." 

Duncan and Jake remained silent. Joe nodded toward Jake's right arm. "Looks like you'll be out of commission for a while. When you're ready, though, I think I have a proposition that you might want to consider. Something that suits a man of your abilities. Interested?" 

Jake's eyes narrowed in consideration and looked from Joe to Duncan and back again. Jake nodded his head to indicate the empty chair across from his bed. "Have a seat and tell me more," he said. 

* * *

Round Robin Home 

© 2001 Palladia, Storie, & Wain   
Please send comments to the authors! 

General Disclaimer: the concept of Immortality and any characters from the _Highlander_ universe belong to Davis/Panzer Productions, et al. No copyright infringement intended, there is no monetary gain, yadda yadda yadda. 

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